Cai's wolves: Taxidermy or not?

A reader named Ash recently posted a great question about the waves of wolves in Cai Guo Qiang's "Head On":  "I wrote about this and his tiger works for my dissertation. Cai has a background in theatre prop making, apparently these 'wolves' are made from sheep skins. This wolf in sheep's clothing tickled me greatly!  Question: knowing this, does it still count as taxidermy?"

Great question Ash! As I've argued here, there, and elsewhere, taxidermy is a lively presentation of animal form.  Sewing bits and pieces of animals together is not taxidermy. (Leather shoes are not taxidermy.)  In my opinion, to be considered as taxidermy, the mount must convey some degree of animal charisma, some sense of a holding together of animal form - basically some notion of liveliness. (A mink stole with head and paws still attached is not taxidermy.)  In which case, yes - the wolves in sheep's clothing are still taxidermy ... but with a twist.

There are lots of example of contemporary artists who are putting together bits and pieces of different animals.  Perhaps the most famous is Thomas Grunfeld and his strange Misfit series.  Mark Dion also created a polar bear using goat skins in his 1995 piece, "Ursus maritimus." Both these artists use taxidermy and animal form to provoke thought and to warn about human uses and abuses of nature, that is, the combination of animal parts is not without moral message: viewers are meant to read through and between the animal stitches.

Dion is the more articulate of the two.  After all, polar bears are THE icons of global warming.  Interestingly, if there was a living icon of human environmental folly, (as opposed to the dead dodo or other extinct species), goats would probably be it.  As Europeans sailed around exploring the world, they often introduced goats and pigs onto island with the idea that the animals would reproduce, providing good eating the next time the sailors came back that way.  Of course the goats proliferated, often doing severe harm to local species.  Such introduced goats are considered such pests, and -- rather shockingly, I think -- they are frequently exterminated wholesale, often gunned down by men in helicopter, all in an effort to save the indigenous species.  What happened on the Galapagos Islands is an interesting example read here +.  In other words, polar bears are everything we are trying to save - goats are a dime a dozen.

But I digress... Dion's "Ursus maritimus" and Cai Guo Qiang's "Head On" are both still taxidermy - a lively representation of animal form using a genuine skin of an animal. Of course animal form mixed with human ideology, but then, all taxidermy is.  There is no escaping the fact that taxidermy is always as much a representation of animal form as it is a presentation of animals. 

Comments

[pomposa]

The pieces above certainly belong in the 'art' category. Another non-standard grouping are “Re-creations” (“Renderings which include no natural parts of the animal portrayed”), the best of which turn up at the Taxidermy World Championships. The best-known re-creationist is the prodigiously talented Ken Walker of Alberta who has made a 'panda' out of bearskins and an extinct 'Irish elk' out of ordinary elk skins.

[Morgan Mavis]

Guilt free wonder that is how describe this and David R harpers last to win.By creating fraudulent animal skins of sheep skin the artist gives the viewer permission to appreciate the beauty, power and wonder of taxidermy, stripping away the guilt that is felt by some when visiting natural history collections., making his feasts for the eyes highly digestible to the public. The synthetic fictional animals let the viewer feel this wonder again, this time guilt-free.
but you know me any chance to evoke wonder and i am first in line